1960 protest art explicitly compared nuclear war to Nazi crematoriums

Evidence

Fisher’s statement termed the current Cold War situation “a cul-de-sac which makes the Nazi crematoriums relatively innocuous” and cited the March Gallery’s ambition to spearhead demonstrations on and discussions of the madness of “atomic war.” Quite likely the March Group was aware of Julian Beck’s concurrent effort to organize a general strike for peace. The Voice critic Suzanne Kiplinger reported going from reading twelve pages on fallout shelters in the current issue of Consumer Guide to the March Gallery, which, she imagined, was presenting “the results of a thermonuclear ground burst.” She found the show sufficiently shocking although she faulted the blinding overhead light. More temperate, Jill Johnston wrote a capsule review in Art News describing it as “a show of protest [that] isn’t pretty to look at,” “a chamber of horrors [that] leaves little to be desired” except the ability to reach beyond people who already support the movement. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 225

Categorization

• XREF: Comparable to the reader’s earlier material on noise and danger-signal framing — the Cold War Bomb as ambient existential threat mirrors chronic environmental threat. — connects to: West German rearmament with atomic weapons spurred the first large-scale protest wave — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2345